Bond ambitions Districts are looking at expansion options

Starting this spring, several school districts are going to ask taxpayers to help them improve and expand their school buildings.

Some districts have just begun considering expansion and aren't ready to approach voters. Residential growth is beginning to increase schools' student populations, and many administrators expect the enrollment upswing will continue.

The good news in those growing districts is that the expenses will be spread among more taxpayers. How large the tax burden is depends in part on how soon districts can run bond elections and start building; construction costs are expected to rise during the next several years.

Only two districts, Bigfork and Whitefish high schools, have planned bond elections this spring. Neither is experiencing enrollment growth. Instead, administrators say, the buildings need upgrades and improvements.

Bigfork

It's only been a few months since voters denied Bigfork School District's $11.1 million high school bond request, but already administrators are ready to bring the issue before the public again. The district will mail ballots Feb. 14 for another bond election. All ballots are due back to the district office March 4.

The district is requesting the same amount of money and proposing the same changes it put before voters in the last high school bond election.

Bigfork administrators will mail informational packets about the bond issue to all registered voters later this month, Superintendent Russell Kinzer said. Each packet will contain detailed information about the high school's needs. Packets also will provide information about taxes to help voters better calculate how the bonds might impact their property taxes.

Voters can find information about the bond issue by contacting the district office. Residents are welcome to tour the school at almost any time, Kinzer said.

The high school's biggest needs are upgrades and expansions, he said. If the bond issue passes, plans include a commons and cafeteria and several new classrooms to replace outdated rooms and labs.

In October, the high school request failed by 84 votes. Voters did, however, approve the requested $5.5 million elementary bond issue.

Construction on the elementary project will begin this spring, Kinzer said. Plans include new primary grade and middle school classrooms, but the district's first priorities are fixing the elementary parking lot to improve traffic flow, enlarging the cafeteria and creating a new main entrance, complete with administrative offices, off the parking lot.

Those things have to be finished by the end of the summer, Kinzer said.

The parking lot must be ready for parents to drop off their children. The main entrance and new offices must be finished so children are no longer dependent on the existing "main" entrance, which opens into the cafeteria. The cafeteria must be finished so it can accommodate the students.

"We're going to try to phase those so those are completed when school starts," Kinzer said, "and then we'll complete other classroom renovations throughout the school year."

Whitefish

Two days after Bigfork's bond election, the Whitefish School District will mail ballots to its voters. The district is requesting a $21.5 million, 20-year bond issue to pay for upgrades at the high school. Ballots are due at the district March 27.

If voters approve the bonds, the money will be used for nearly 164,000 square feet of new construction, including a food court, cafeteria, commons and several new and remodeled classrooms.

The proposed project will move the high school into the 21st century. The high school was built during the "typewriter era," not the "computer era," according to the newly formed Friends of Whitefish Schools, a ballot issue committee dedicated to promoting the high school bond.

The project would update the school's outdated technology infrastructure, Superintendent Jerry House said, and eliminate some of the building's safety issues and code violations. If voters approve the bonds, construction is slated for completion in winter 2011.

Friends of Whitefish Schools will begin offering tours of the school later this month and will have brochures and displays available for the public. For further information, voters should contact the committees' co-chairs, Linda Maetzold at 862-5158 or Lin Akey at 862-3747.

Neither Whitefish nor Bigfork are requesting bonds to accommodate burgeoning student populations.

Whitefish High School's enrollment numbers have remained fairly static over the last decade. Bigfork High School's enrollment has declined by about 13 percent over the same period. Required federal programs take up the space those extra students used to occupy, administrators said.

In other districts, however, enrollment has climbed steadily over the last 10 years. It's a good situation, administrators agree; schools welcome more students and the additional state funding they bring. But finding a place to put them all is proving problematic in more than one district.

Kila

During the past decade, Kila School's student population has increased by 25 percent. Twenty more students were enrolled this fall than were there at the same time a year ago, and the school is at capacity.

A new building isn't an option. The district's bonding capacity is just over $1 million, and early estimates put the cost of a new building at $4 million, Principal Renee Boisseau told the Inter Lake in October.

A building committee has met regularly in Kila for the past several months to discuss the district's options. At this point, Boisseau said, the committee still is trying to figure out what the school really needs.

"It's still very preliminary," she said. "We're trying to determine our needs versus our wants."

Some needs, she added, include additional classrooms to accommodate the growing student population. The school needs a larger library; if the library was larger, Kila could expand its computer lab, which is full with no room for more machines.

The district also would like to provide students with a separate cafeteria. The school serves breakfast and lunch in the gym, which limits the times students can have physical education.

The building committee has discussed adding a science lab and a multipurpose room, Boisseau said. The latter could, among other things, be used for music classes.

The plans are nowhere near final, however, and there is no price tag yet. The soonest the district could bring a bond issue before the public is next fall, Boisseau said.

The committee has surveyed teachers about what they think the school's needs are, she said. Soon the committee will mail a similar survey to parents and community members.

Olney-Bissell

After watching its student population decline at the turn of the millennium, Olney-Bissell School is experiencing enrollment growth again. Enrollment is still about 14 percent lower than it was 10 years ago, but the population grew by 10 students this year.

"We dropped quite a bit, and now we're building up again," Principal Lona Everett said. "Our kindergarten these past couple years has been quite large."

This year, the school has 15 kindergartners. In recent years, the class has had 10 to 12 students; before that, it averaged about eight children.

If that trend continues, Everett said, classrooms will be crowded as those lower grades move up. Anticipating that growth, the district has hired an architecture firm, Architects Northwest, to begin planning for possible expansion.

"We're working on starting to just study the idea of adding on to our school," Everett said. "We know we have to get that process started."

Somers-Lakeside

The district is back at square one after the defeat of its $7.125 million bond issue last November. Bond money would have built a new building on the middle school campus, which would have freed up classrooms in the district's other buildings, both of which are at capacity.

It was a disappointing setback, Superintendent Teri Wing said after the election, because it didn't solve the district's need for classroom space to accommodate its growing student body. Enrollment has increased by 14 percent over the last decade.

"We have a little bit of reprieve this year, because we didn't have the huge growth that we did last year," Wing said.

This year, she said, teachers have been able to make due with classrooms divided by screens and moving tutoring classes to the hallways.

"We'll do that for the rest of this year," she said. "It's just what's going to come next fall …"

If the school experiences an enrollment surge like it did in 2006, however, when 65 additional students arrived on the first day of school, there will not be room for everyone.

"We'll just go back to the drawing board" if that happens, Wing said.

The district recently mailed surveys to everyone who voted last November, asking for suggestions.

"It's to get feedback from them," she explained. "What would you suggest we do now? The growth problem isn't going to go away. How do you think we should solve this?"

West Valley

Like Wing, West Valley School Superintendent Todd Fiske worries what the school will do if recent enrollment trends continue. In the last decade, the student population has swelled by 21 percent.

"If we continue with the 40-kid growth that we had this year, I don't know where we're going to put them," he said.

That kind of growth is a real possibility in the West Valley district, where developers could add more than 3,000 lots over the next several years. If even half those homes have school-aged children, the school won't be able to hold them all.

The Starling Development, which hopes to put in 3,200 lots west of Glacier High School, has donated 10 acres to the district for a school site. Adding a second school would alleviate the crowded classrooms at West Valley, but it may not be an option for the district right now.

"It's one thing to say, yes, we can do it, and not afford it," Fiske said. "To build a school from the ground up is a far different price tag than adding on. … Even if we wanted to do it right now, our community could not afford it."

The district's bonding capacity isn't high enough to build a new school, he added, and West Valley is still paying for the $1.9 million addition to the school seven years ago.

The district is considering "what could we bond, and what could we build with that?" Fiske said. "That's the big, million-dollar question."

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com